In the early hours of 14 February 2024, thirty-seven people arrived in northern Lesvos. They landed on a beach near Kalo Limani, a tiny fishing village almost deserted in winter and surrounded by mountains. The group included twenty adults and seventeen children, several of them babies, all Afghan nationals. Upon reaching land, they began climbing the steep slope of an olive grove in the darkness. This was not their first attempt to enter Greece. On three previous occasions, masked men had forced them at gunpoint back into Turkish waters. They had also been beaten, including the children. Terrified, they feared encountering the masked men again.
By 10 a.m., believing the danger of a pushback had passed, the group contacted an emergency hotline operated by the Legal Centre Lesvos, a collective of local lawyers. The organisation informed Greek authorities and the UNHCR, providing the migrants’ location. At noon, a local reporter arrived in the area together with a friend. A Frontex patrol stopped their car and asked if they had seen any migrants. After confirming they were searching for the same group, the patrol group and the journalist’s party looked in different directions. An hour later, the Frontex patrol left. The locals stayed, suspecting the location provided might be inaccurate, and expanded their search area.
By 1:45 p.m., they were about to give up, convinced the migrants were no longer there. It seemed likely that the group had been intercepted earlier and detained – or forcibly returned to Turkey. At the last moment, they decided to climb to the highest point in the area before ruling out their presence entirely. To reach the summit, they crossed a river, jumped over walls, climbed rocky patches, and navigated vegetation with no through-path. At the top, they found the migrants trying to shelter from the cold inside the walls of a ruined barn with no roof or doors. The cries of children filled the air and continued for hours. Everyone was soaked; most were shivering. Some had no shoes, while others had wrapped their feet in plastic bags.

A 45-year-old man named Abdullah Arab approached the locals, speaking broken English and visibly nervous. He explained that his wife was pregnant and urgently needed help. Abdullah was carrying a baby wrapped in plastic bags. Both his clothes and the baby’s were wet. Inside the barn, two women lay on the ground; one was Fareva, Abdullah’s wife. The other adults surrounded them, trying to warm the women with their bodies. Fareva could barely speak, breathing heavily and in great pain. Her water had broken, and her contractions were intensifying. Her baby was on the way.
The journalist called 112, the EU emergency number, to report the situation. By 3:30 p.m., several Greek police officers and two Frontex agents – a man and a woman from Germany – arrived. “Welcome to Greece!” shouted the senior Greek officer as he struggled up the hill. Fareva did not hear the greeting, holding back tears.
The police ordered the migrants to leave the barn and sit outside by a wall for a headcount, leaving the pregnant women alone. The youngest Greek officer counted 38 people, while the German Frontex agent counted 40. They could not agree on the number. Recounting gave different results again. Fareva and the other pregnant woman cried out for help.
The group had gone nearly two days without food or water. Their exhaustion was so extreme that a 20-year-old named Jobid fainted and fell backward off some rocks, fortunately sustaining only scratches. Jobid wore several wet socks on one foot and a plastic bag on the other. Beside him, a child silently cried, trembling from the cold. The Frontex agent began shouting in heavily-accented English, “Why did you climb the mountain? You should have waited at the port! Waited on the beach!” The migrants, their faces blank with exhaustion, looked astonished; they could not understand her words. Abdullah, knowing some Italian from working in the Italian army base in Herat, explained that his collaboration with NATO made him a target of Taliban threats. According to Abdullah, everyone in their group faced suspicion and danger under the Taliban regime.
Abdullah emphasized his wife’s condition again. The Frontex agent stopped shouting and approached Fareva in the barn. Returning, she shouted again, this time for help: “Does anyone have experience with childbirth?” The firefighters exchanged glances and shrugged. The agent started a video call to a German doctor friend, who provided instructions until medical staff could arrive. The other German agent and a firefighter assisted her.
The fire brigade commander contacted the coordination center again, urgently requesting an ambulance and a medical team. He admitted that, despite the explicit request, he had initially decided not to send a doctor because he didn’t believe it was a real emergency. “Migrants often say there’s a pregnant woman or some emergency, and it turns out not to be true,” he told one of the officers. His face seemed to betray some regret for not believing them this time. Lesvos has only eight ambulances.
Since 2020, no rescue organisations have been present to ensure safer landings. The only NGO operating in the area, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), intervenes only after migrants arrive and only in medical emergencies, when resources allow. That day, no MSF team was available.
At 4:30 p.m., the ambulance got stuck in the mud. Nervous laughter erupted as the fire chief shouted at a subordinate, “Handle the ambulance and get the doctor up here on foot!” By 5:00 p.m., a doctor and a nurse arrived, ill-equipped for the climb, slipping on every stone in their Crocs. It was their first time dealing with such a situation.
The doctor gestured for Fareva to push, but Fareva signalled that she refused to give birth there. She was cold and frightened. Neither could convince the other for a while, lacking a common language to communicate. At 5:30 p.m., the doctor instructed firefighters to carry Fareva down on a stretcher. The other pregnant woman was already in the ambulance, also transported on a stretcher. Meanwhile, the rest of the group had been loaded into police vans bound for the Kara Tepe refugee camp. The firefighters carefully carried Fareva, who reached the ambulance without further incident. It rushed to the hospital. The youngest officer asked aloud, “So, do we count the baby in the report?”
Fareva and Abdullah’s baby was born without complications. Named Bilal, he was the couple’s fourth child. By midday on 15 February, Fareva was smiling but exhausted at Mytilene hospital. The husband of her roommate, Haroum, acted as a translator between her and the medical staff. The ward housed other mothers, including two Congolese women. All six beds were reserved for migrants.
Abdullah could not visit Fareva and Bilal during the first few days because newly registered migrants were prohibited from leaving the camp. Even if allowed, he lacked money for a taxi, and no direct bus service ran from Kara Tepe to the hospital. Baby clothes came from NoBorder Kitchen, a grassroots solidarity group, which provided two bags of bodysuits, gloves, blankets, and other well-kept items.
On 18 February, Fareva and Bilal were discharged and reunited with their family at Kara Tepe. Their new life in Europe had begun. On 2 May, they left for Frankfurt, sending a photo to the journalist from the airport and a sticker saying, “Goodbye.”
The last conversation on the mountain revealed the truth about their hiding spot. When asked if she knew why the migrants had chosen such a difficult location, the Frontex agent calmly replied, “Of course I know – it’s because of the pushbacks.” The same pushbacks that officially don’t exist.